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October 30, 2011

Without any doubt, this goal has been scored according to the rule book. Raúl surely touched the ball with his arm or hand, only due to this contact the ball crossed the line. However, it was neither a deliberate handball, nor there was an unnatural position of the hand. Furthermore, the distance was very small.

However, referee Tobias Welz decided to consult Raúl. Obviously, he admitted that he touched the ball with his hand but without intention. Hence, Welz allowed the goal.
After the match, some players of Hoffenheim were upset and even called Raúl a liar.

To my mind, it is impossible that a referee can, must or may ask a player. The referee converts the responsibility for the decision to the player. Apart from the fact that it was a correct decision, Welz and Bartsch (AR2) must see that themselves. One could observe yesterday what happens with the reputation of a player like Raúl, even though he said the truth. What happens if a player lies like Luis Fabiano did last year in the conversation with Lannoy? So far nothing, but consulting a player unfolds as indefensible condition.

October 27, 2011

One and a half year ago, there was no duel. There was merely Alberto Undiano Mallenco who joined several youth competitions on UEFA and FIFA level, who has refereed nearly 200 Primera División matches and who was born in 1973 which means that he would even be capable of refereeing matches at Russia's 2018 World Cup. On the whole one can certainly say that it was no bad World Cup by the Spaniard, after his lesson how to destroy a football match (Germany-Serbia) in which he showed a more than pedantic style, even though the majority of decisions were according to the rule book, there were two easier matches for him which were solved in a satisfying way. In his first three CL matches after the World Cup, he confirmed his style but showed overall good perfomances, in his quarterfinal match between Chelsea and Man.United however, he made one big mistake. That was his last CL appearance until now, he did not receive any appointment on MDs 1-3, finally he has been appointed for a MD4 CL match. The question is whether UEFA can leave a referee they prefer for the coming Euro 2012 out of the competition for three matchdays. As far as I know, he was not injured as he refereed some Spanish matches during that time.

Carlos Velasco Carballo in Dublin (UEFA.com)

Anyway, last season was Velasco's time. I cannot remember that a referee received a EL final and 5 CL matches including a semifinal in his first CL season. His group stage appearances were good, the round of 16 match as well and obviously, this was the basis of his later appointments. Velasco offers a pretty calm style which is actually not typical of Spanish referees, moreover, his calls were good, too. One can say that Velasco manhandled his CL semifinal (Schalke-Man.United 0-2) with flying colours. I am certainly no prophet when I state that it would have been much better for Velasco if he had not been appointed for the EL final in Dublin between Porto and Braga (1-0). In the most boring UEFA final in the last years, he could not convince the majority of "observers" whose opinions were presented at worldreferee.com. Pierluigi Collina observed him.

It is very hard to say which referee will be taken by UEFA. On the one hand, there is a clear tendency for the benefit of Carlos Velasco Carballo, I cannot however imagine that such a tournament experienced referee like Alberto Undiano Mallenco has to stay at home.

There were furthermore some moves with their assistant referees. Undiano was always assisted by Fermin Martínez (who will leave the FIFA list next year) and Juan Carlos Yuste Jiménez - the or at least one of the biggest assistant referee talents UEFA has to offer. Velasco was always accompanied by Roberto Alonso Fernández and Jesús Calvo Guadamuro.

For a few months now, UEFA has been appointing Yuste Jiménez at Velasco's side instead of Calvo Guadamuro. Latter assisted Undiano in the last matches.

This move must mean something, but I am not sure about what it means. There are probably two opportunities:

October 26, 2011

The top match in Bundesliga last matchday unfolded to be the toughest one as well. Manuel Gräfe was in charge of Hannover 96 - Bayern München and had quite a lot to do. After a reasonably awarded penalty kick to Hannover in minute 22, there were some troubles in minute 27. Later, he dismissed a Hannover player with a 2nd yellow card, but let's focus on the 27th minute.

It is a paramount example for how it should be and how e.g. DFB instructed its officials, i.e. that they should increase the teamwork between referee, assistant referees and the 4th official. Officials involved in: FIFA referee Manuel Gräfe, FIFA assistant referee Markus Häcker and Bundesliga assistant referee René Kunsleben.

Follow the link for the video, as youtube does not allow such videos, you may download it here

The members of FIFA Task Force Football 2014 at their second meeting in Zürich, Switzerland

The FIFA Task Force Football 2014 met for the second time in Zurich to analyse current topics in football. Afterwards, FIFA.com spoke withFranz Beckenbauer, who chaired the meeting, and former world-class referee and current Head of the FIFA Refereeing Department Massimo Busacca about what they had discussed.

Franz Beckenbauer (Chairman of FIFA Task Force Football 2014)

The main themes of today's meetingThere were a number of points on the agenda, including the subject of fair play, and we discussed what needs to be done better in the future. What we saw last year was terrible, including in the most important match of the past four years, namely the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ Final between Spain and the Netherlands in South Africa. The way the two teams behaved in the first half was awful. It was meant to be a good advertisement for the game of football but it was totally the opposite. The final of the Copa Libertadores in South America was similar, and things like that do not belong on a football pitch – they need to be sanctioned.

Offside to be simplified

The Laws of the GameOn the subject of offside, we discussed how to simplify the rule. Active and passive offside are incompatible, it's too complicated. Another issue was triple punishment, which is an integral part of the game. As things stand at the moment, a penalty is given and a red card shown if the last man commits a foul in the penalty area. The committee believes that this is too much. Our suggestion would be to award a penalty and show a yellow card for a simple foul in the area, while a serious foul would see a penalty and a red card, which would also be shown if it occured outside the penalty area.

Future meetingsWe had a lively discussion for almost five hours. The subject of offside will be dealt with again the next time we meet, as it is not something that can be changed in the space of a couple of minutes. I put it on the agenda at the last moment since I had come to realise recently that referees, assistant referees and also the fans do not fully understand the rule anymore. We will continue as we have today – in principle we agree how it should look, but we now need to find the exact definition. This is important, and we all have to work together a lot more closely to really find a simple definition.The offside rule is fundamental. It has been doctored a few times already, but each time it was made more complicated. Football is a simple game with simple rules, and this is something that we need to get back to.

The composition of the FIFA Task Force Football 2014The committee has been well put-together and well prepared, and as chairman I am very happy with this. I realised that I was the only coach on the committee, and I would prefer it in future if other coaches were involved. Coaches are always an important subject, whether we’re talking about them being given a red card or being sent to the stands or changing rooms, they are always a central topic. We need to discuss all this in detail and perhaps get a coach or two onto the committee.

The appreciation of the Task ForceWe’ve been assured that we’re going to be taken more seriously, and this means that we have to be committed to preparing even better than we had before and to deal with subjects in even more detail.

Massimo Busacca (Head of the FIFA Refereeing Department)

The main subjects that were discussed
We discussed what in our opinion are two very important points. One is the interpretation of offside, which can cause a number of problems nowadays, and the other is triple punishment, where we want to find a sense of proportion.

The representation of referees on the committeeThis is very important. Of course we referees can develop our own ideas, but exchanging ideas with former referees, players and coaches is incredibly important if we are to understand exactly how they feel. I may well have my own opinion, but players who are involved in football every day may well have a different one. Maybe there are certain things that we can do better in the future to improve the game. It’s very important for us to discuss things with players and coaches so that we come to more of an agreement at the end of the day.

Fair playA referee can't do anything on his own – he needs the help of players and coaches. We can be 200 per centprepared, but if we don't get fair play, then we're on our own out there on the pitch. If players were to respect that then things would be easier for us. When I think back to the big matches that I refereed, it was much easier to ensure that there was respect and fair play during the game when I had the support of the players. We need fair play from everyone involved throughout the match.

The main aims as far as referees are concernedWe want uniformity. It is impossible to eliminate problems, but on a given weekend there should not be divergent refereeing decisions being given in the same league. Refereeing is becoming more professional, but we cannot rule out the odd mistakes being made in the future.

October 25, 2011

According to DFB, about 20 DFB Referees will probably be banned during the next weeks as the prosecution has initiated proceedings against them due to tax evasion.

Former FIFA Referee Michael Kempter has confirmed that he is concerned, DFB also confirmed that a Bundesliga referee from Munich, who is appointed for a DFB Cup Match on Wednesday was concerned. Although - as it has now revealed - Brych had to undergo a raid of the police, he is not replaced and will referee his DFB Cup match between Hannover and Mainz.

Even though Fandel said that it was too early to ban referees or to take measures against them, referee instructor Lutz Michael Fröhlich said that there was a lot of anxiety at this moment amongst the whole refereeing.

There are voiced which say that this issue has been known on behalf of DFB since 2009.
In 2009, Cetin Sevinc and Thorben Siewer (underclass referees, 2nd division assistant referees) were protectively banned by DFB as there were official determinations against them, after their verdict of not guilty, DFB reinstated them, Siewer was even promoted. Following DFB's statutes, a referee who is under legal suspicion has to be protectively banned from all competition until the point of the abatement of action.
In 2009, Kempter admitted that he had dodged the tax around 24.000 €, this was revealed or unfolded in the course of investigations concerning the sex affairs.

UPDATE: FIFA referee Felix Brych admitted that he is the concerned Bundesliga referee from Munich.

Finally, one has to state that this case could develop or has already developed to a serious image damage for DFB and its referees and is naturally no peccadillo.

October 24, 2011

Several Bundesliga referees are under suspicion: they are said to not have taxed their revenues gained in test matches. For this reason, there was a raid of the police in DFB's centre.

The DFB (Deutscher Fußball Bund) has confirmed a respective report of the "Express" and explained that officials arrived in Frankfurt/Main to get access of several documents about refereeing.

Moreover, according to SID (Sport-Informations-Dienst), even one popular Bundesliga referee from Munich underwent a house search which was confirmed by the concerned referee who did not want to be called by his name. [Merely Dr. Felix Brych, Peter Sippel and Günter Perl come into question].

DFB general secretary Niersbach said that "there [were] no charges against the DFB" and that "the correct payment of tax is resided with every referee himself".

The DFB referee heads Herbert Fandel and Lutz Wagner were surprised: "It is impossible for us so far to say something specific on this issue".

The point of time when Collina is going to publish the list of officials for UEFA Euro 2012 in Poland/Ukraine is coming closer. The last seasons, but especially the last months exposed some referees who should be seeded for a Euro slot, if I remember outstanding perfomances of e.g. Nicola Rizzoli in Arsenal-Barcelona. We however know that there are four countries where I personally cannot decide which referee should be chosen.

In the next days, I will write an article (each day one nation) about these cases:

Although Howard Webb (r.) should be seeded as World Cup and Champions League final referee (2010), Martin Atkinson showed a superb last season and was rewarded by a CL quarterfinal between Internazionale and Schalke (2-5) and a EL semifinal which was played between Braga and Benfica (1-0).

In England, Atkinson had some problems and struggled during the last weeks after e.g. a controversial sending-off in the Merseyside derby. I was not always content with his style which is sometimes pedantic and sometimes lenient, but UEFA showed that they trust him a lot: two very hot and important qualifiers (Bosnia-Belarus; Turkey-Germany) and of course the CL MD1 appointment for Barca-AC Milan.

Webb had a very hard season and could not show satisfying perfomances in 2010/2011. His first two Champions-League matches this season were however quite good, the difficult qualifier between Greece and Croatia was solved in a solid, but no totally convincing way.

Considering the fact that there was absolutely no consistency in FIFA's and UEFA's decisions with regard to English referees' nominations (2002: Poll, 2004: Riley, 2006: Poll, 2008: Webb, 2010: Webb), I think that Atkinson (l.) could have a realistic chance.

Another fact supports this impression: Atkinson was nearly always assisted by Mullarkey and Kirkup, sometimes by Cann. These are definitely the best English assistant referees (to my mind Child is the best, but he is still inexperienced and young) one can choose for a Euro.

To be honest, I assume that for these two referees it will be their last competition. After 2012, that is my feeling or my suggestion, it is Mark Clattenburg's time who is to my mind seeded for the place as additional assistant referee 1, perhaps along with Marriner, but perhaps Attwell has a chance, too.

Finally, another point should be paid attention to: we know about the difficult relation between Webb and Poland, normally I do not want the UEFA to pay attention to such polemic cases, however, considering the seriousness of this "difficult relation", well..perhaps it would not be a good idea to send Webb to Poland and Ukraine, not in order to "protect" the Polish fans, but rather to Webb's welfare.

October 21, 2011

Yesterday, there was a quite remarkable red card issued by Greek referee Anastassios Kakkos. What once former US president George Bush jr. had had to bear happened now to assistant referee 2 Christos Akrivos who was hit by a Maccabi player's shoe.

The list can be downloaded by clicking on the attached link. I again emphasize that these rankings are based on the referee's experience, appointments and shown perfomances and the impression I received.

October 18, 2011

DFB Referee Comitee President and former UEFA referee Herbert Fandel (photo above) has defended the passive offside rule following this incident in Mainz last matchday (2:15):

Marco Fritz - or better assistant referee 1 Volker Wezel disallowed this goal. If it had happened last season, the goal would probably have counted, but there was a new instruction for the officials to decide that a player is offside if he irritates the goalkeeper (nothing new) but also as soon as the player being in an offside position ties a defender who is then missing to shield another player. First, we have to state that it is the correct decision made by Wezel, but last Friday, there was a similar situation prior to Dortmund's second goal in Bremen, the assistant referee did not flag for offside. Football supporters will never understand this rule in all its facets as long as there are different evaluations at the same matchday...

Fandel nonetheless defended this rule, as they "try to come to terms with that. Offside always is difficult, there always will be some kind of mumbling", Fandel said. There are even voices that request the complete abolishment of the whole offside rule.

After a Bundesliga matchday with seven penalties in nine matches and four red cards and many difficult or close situations, another topic awakes the German football world's attention: the punishment for professional fouls in the box. The rule does not divide between inside the box and outside the box, it is always a straight red card. Peter Sippel (r.) dismissed Schalke goalkeeper Ralf Fährmann (l.) after a foul in the box on Dorge Kouemaha (was it a foul?). DFB referee instructor and former FIFA referee Lutz-Michael Fröhlich said that they "wished that there will be a rule change in the foreseeable future". The DFB suggested a rule change at IFAB's meeting in March 2011 which excepts the "double punishment" (= penalty and red card). The IFAB however, consisting of eight members, amongst there are four FIFA members and four officials coming from England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. In my opinion, this makes it nearly impossible that there will be considerable changes. Finally, the IFAB shirked that and decided that this would be a task for the FIFA's Task Force Football (many football officials, former players, but also Busacca, Mikkelsen and Alarcón). DFB instructor Lutz Wagner therefore hopes that there will be a rule change "at least before the FIFA World Cup 2014".

October 13, 2011

England striker Wayne Rooney has received a three-match ban from UEFA's Control and Disciplinary Body following his sending-off issued by the German referee Wolfgang Stark in the Group G qualifier against Montenegro.

An appeal may be lodged against the verdict of the UEFA Control and Disciplinary Body within three days of the dispatch of the reasoned decision.

England coach Fabio Capello has just announced that Rooney will not play any role in his first team before and during the final tournament.

The UEFA's Control and Disciplinary Body's decision is made up by the assessment of the respective referee and the assessment of the respective inspector who consults the TV videos.

Referees prefer football teams of their own culture - that is confirmed by a study made by the psychologists Claude Messner and Benjamin Schmid of Basel University, Switzerland. They have analyzed more than thousand matches of the highest Swisse football league and detected: A team wins - on the average - more often when the referee comes from the same Swisse district, as long as the opponent comes from another part of Switzerland where one speaks another language.

For this reason, Switzerland was the ideal test country as it contains several cantons which have different languages as official mother tongues, i.e. Italian, German and French.

According to the psychologists, as soon as there is a 50-50-decision, the referees tend to prefer the team which shares his own culture. The statistics are obvious: when the referee's culture was shared ONLY by the home-team, this home-team got on the average 1,86 points. As soon as the referee's, the home-team's and away-team's cultures were however identic, the home-team only got 1,58 points on the average.

The scientists emphasized that referees are in general not aware of this cultural preference, it happens involuntarily or unconsciously.

To my mind, this study seems to be quite interesting. It directly leads me to the question of inhowfar the continental neutrality (based on confederation borderlines) which is used in FIFA competitions is still sensible. I had several discussions with Carlos about this topic, I will never understand why e.g. Cuneyt Cakir is able/allowed to referee a match with Egyptian involvement (u20 WC, BRA-EGY) but at the same time he may not handle matches with e.g. Icelandic involvement.

In addition to this, the continental neutrality probably inhibits the perfomance-principle. Not the best referees are consequently chosen for the matches, their appointments depend on the confederations of the respective team which is in the match. Remember Lubos Michel in GER-ARG in 2006, he was great..

Actually, one does not need such rules because every referee is neutral...but if we need it, I would argue the case for a cultural neutrality. I know that it is difficult to evaluate when the referee's culture could be similar to the teams' ones..

After their end in the UEFA Euro 2012 qualifiers, the Armenian Federation has filed an official complaint against the sending-off of the Armenian goalkeeper Beresowski. They furthermore argued the case for a punishment against the Spanish referee Eduardo Iturralde González. According to the FFA (Football Federation of Armenia), TV screens confirm that the goalkeeper was wrongly sent off. Obviously, the outcome of the match was influenced by this decision. With a win, Armenia could have reached the Euro finals.The UEFA has not given any statement thus far.

I established a new blog (euro2012stats.blogspot.com) which will only contain information about the coming European championships. It will be about refereeing of course, I however will focus on the tournament itself as well.

The blog is obviously unspoilt, I will start concentrating on it closer to the Play-Off matches in November. There will be always report-pdfs like this one.

Discussing about refereeing however still remains on the "main blog", I am only going to seperate it during the final tournament.

Pretty content with the drawing, you as well? I think CRO-TUR is a very hot and tough match to watch...and to referee.

October 12, 2011

I just do not know whether that was the fastest red card ever issued in a FIFA competition. Yesterday, the Australian Peter Green was in charge of the WC 2014 AFC qualifier between Iran and Bahrain (6-0). He sent Bahrain's Al Hooti off - with a straight red card after a studs-up-tackle after just 38 seconds (the foul happened after 34 seconds):

I respect the courage of the decision, apart from the fact that Green was certainly right when sending the player off, I wished that more referees had the courage to not pay attention on the time but solely on the situation and its consequences.I remember Trevor Taylor making a similar decision in a Gold Cup match.

Don't pin me down to that but my impression that Eriksson could be the lucky guy who reaches the final tournament hardens a lot. Assuming that the Swedish will do well, it could be his Euro ticket. Taking into consideration that his five CL perfomances were all quite good, it would not be just a lucky decision but a reasonable one as well.

If you have full appointments, pls post them.
I am looking for them at the moment in the web; the above list will be filled in the next hours.

A+: Major Elite Group
A: Elite Group
B+: Anterior Successor Group
B: Successor Group
B-: Downgraded Successor Group
C+: Regular Option Group
C: Regular Group
C-: Downgraded Regular Group
D: Posterior Group
TD: Talent Development Group